Whitewater Station erected a new brick Church, one of the finest in the interior, under the Pastorate of Rev. C.N.  Stowers, which was dedicated by Bishop Merrill Oct. 19th, 1873.  At this writing, Whitewater ranks among the leading stations of the Conference, having a good congregation and a most enterprising Society.

At the close of this Conference I was returned to the Milwaukee District.  There were only a few changes made in the appointments of the Preachers.  At this Conference the name of Rev. Henry Bannister, D.D., Professor in Garrett Biblical Institute, was transferred from the Racine to the Milwaukee District, and he was made a member of the Summerfield Quarterly Conference.

Dr. Bannister entered the Oneida Conference in 1842, and for two years served as Professor of Languages in the Oneida Conference Seminary.  At the Conference of 1844, he was appointed Principal, and held that position with distinguished honor until he was elected to a Professorship in the Garrett Biblical Institute.  At the present writing he is still at the Institute, doing efficient work.  Nearly a third of a century he has devoted to teaching, dividing his time almost equally between the Seminary and the Institute.

Dr. Bannister is one of Nature’s noblemen, and his membership in any Conference is an honor to the body.  The Wisconsin Conference has recognized his worth, and has sent him three times as one of her delegates to the General Conference, and on one occasion was pleased to put him at the head of the list.  But he is not the property of a Conference; he belongs to the whole Church, and is the peer of his brethren in any convocation she may assemble.

The General Conference met in Buffalo, N.Y., in May, 1860.  The agitation known as the Nazarite movement was then raging through Western New York, and it was understood that several cases would come before the General Conference on appeal from the expelled members of the Genesee Conference.  I was requested to go down to the troubled District and look the ground over before the opening of the Conference.  I did so, but found the movement too far advanced to avoid a rupture of the Societies in many of the charges.  Several of the men who had taken an appeal had stultified themselves and vitiated their appeals, by forming Societies on the basis of the new movement; and though they disclaimed all intention to establish another Church, the formation of these Societies, it was held, could be interpreted in no other way.  Having thus become members of another Church their appeals, which contemplated their restoration to the former Church, could not be entertained.